Fri May 12, 2017 5:17 pm
Well, I'll satisfy a little curiosity for those who've only seen it in movies and TV.
I was on a medical malpractice jury about a decade ago. It lasted about 2 weeks, and generally speaking, I was impressed with the seriousness of my fellow jurors, from every walk of life and ethnic group in Chicago, in aiming to understand the case and evaluate it fairly. I will say that at the end, we got to 11-1 pretty quickly, and that was one of the more miserable days of my life, all the arguments long since overfamiliar and 12 of us trapped together forever. We went away for the weekend, and it seemed pretty clear, when we came back on Monday, that the mother and other relations of the holdout had worked on her to get it over with. Not quite how it's supposed to work, but I think the outcome was correct, it seemed pretty clear to me that she was holding the doctor to too high a standard of clairvoyance. (The doctor had called in epidemiology at least twice, as I recall, which was what you could expect of her— bumping it up to the experts, who didn't spot the problem until their third try.)
Afterwards I was talking to one of the defense attorneys about the experience and he offered that there's a big difference in how they pick people for civil and criminal trials. If it's civil, everyone wants intelligent jurors who can follow the often complex arguments and technical details. (In fact, I thought they often dumbed down arguments for us when they didn't need to-- the plaintiff's side try to make a big deal of how tiny the pills given were, but everyone thought that was silly, we knew big medical power can come in small doses.)
But if it's criminal and you're the defense side... he said your aim is to get at least one sort of unworldly older housewife onto the jury, who seems like she'll look at even the most hardened gangster and say, "Oh, poor boy, he never had a chance."
The other interesting thing was seeing how information was restricted to the jury; there were many things you'd naturally ask that we could not be told. We suspected early on, based on how the case was made, that the hospital had already settled with the family (the hospital had clearly bungled a few things). That was confirmed at the end. It was also interesting that while the doctors had to testify carefully and accurately, those who had been interns and residents at the time basically adopted a Nuremberg defense-- I remember nothing that's not in my deposition, I have no opinion, refer to my deposition, I was just following the doctor's orders.
Anyway, fascinating experience that I'll be happy not to repeat...
“Sentimentality is when it doesn't come off—when it does, you get a true expression of life's sorrows.” —Alain-Fournier